Honduras Shuts Down Media Outlets, Then Relents

ELISABETH MALKIN and GINGER THOMPSON

Tuesday

Sep 29, 2009 at 5:09 AM

The de facto government blocked a protest march and shut down two broadcasters, but later reversed its emergency decree.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The de facto government backed off Monday from its attempt to shut down protests and limit free speech after congressional leaders warned that they would not support the measure.

The revolt by Congress, the first public fracture in the coalition that ousted President Manuel Zelaya three months ago, showed that the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, faces limits on his power to crack down on dissent.

In an extraordinary televised news conference Monday evening, Mr. Micheletti asked for “forgiveness from the Honduran people” and said he would ask the Supreme Court to lift the decree “as quickly as possible.”

But the government’s reversal came on the same day that the United States sent mixed messages about the crisis, comments that critics said could embolden the coup-imposed government.

The Micheletti government announced the decree Sunday night, imposing sweeping restrictions on civil liberties. The decree allowed the government to shut down broadcasters and ban unauthorized public meetings, and let the police detain suspects without warrants.

Early Monday, masked police officers took over a television station and soldiers formed a barricade around a radio station, shutting down two media outlets that had been the principal voices of opposition to the June 28 coup that ousted Mr. Zelaya.

Later, hundreds of police officers cordoned off either side of a street where several hundred protesters had gathered for a march that Mr. Zelaya, who secretly slipped back into the country last week, had billed as a final offensive. His supporters appeared to have been scared off, and the march was prevented.

But by midafternoon, the congressional leadership arrived at the presidential palace to tell Mr. Micheletti that Congress would not approve the decree, which Honduran law requires it to do.

“We need to lower the pressure, and all begin to calm down so that we can have a dialogue,” said José Alfredo Saavedra, the president of Congress and a member of the delegation that met with Mr. Micheletti.

The American response to the decree on Monday was somewhat equivocal. The State Department condemned the government’s actions. “I think it’s time for the de facto regime to put down the shovel,” said a spokesman, Philip J. Crowley. “With every action, they keep on making the hole deeper.”

But at the headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington, where diplomats met in an emergency session to discuss the Micheletti government’s expulsion of four of its diplomats on Sunday, the American envoy reserved his strongest condemnation for Mr. Zelaya.

W. Lewis Amselem, the acting American representative, called Mr. Zelaya “irresponsible and foolish” for returning to Honduras before a negotiated settlement was reached.

“The president should stop acting as though he were starring in an old movie,” Mr. Amselem said.

Chris Sabatini, an analyst at the Council of the Americas, said that the United States was embarrassed at being linked to Mr. Zelaya, “a dangerously capricious leader.” But he said the mixed messages, which he said have characterized the American response since the coup, could also be an attempt “to soften Micheletti’s position by showing that they are even-handed.”

“The effect is, however, that the United States looks a little weak-kneed before the de facto government,” he said.

José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch said that if the United States was trying to spread the blame, the strategy was not working. “It has the effect of defusing the pressure,” he said. “Micheletti is the one who is taking away freedoms to an outrageous degree and the United States needs to be focusing all its attention on him.”

Despite international condemnation and an aid cutoff, the Micheletti government has gambled that it can hold out until scheduled elections go ahead on Nov. 29 and a new president takes office in January.

But Mr. Zelaya’s return to Honduras, where he has taken refuge in the Brazilian Embassy, seems to have forced Mr. Micheletti’s hand, drawing him into taking ever more severe and self-isolating measures.

On Saturday, the de facto government told diplomats from Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela to turn in their credentials if their nations did not recognize the Micheletti government.

On Sunday, the government turned back four diplomats from the O.A.S. who had arrived to begin setting up a visit of foreign ministers from O.A.S. countries. It threatened to shut down Brazil’s embassy within 10 days if Brazil did not either turn over Mr. Zelaya for trial or grant him asylum, a threat Brazil rebuffed.

The congressional response to the decree appears to reflect differences in strategy within the governing coalition, if not in the final goal. While the government seemed willing to disregard international opprobrium in its efforts to muzzle the opposition, the main parties in Congress have a strong interest in finding a political way out of the crisis.

The leaders who confronted Mr. Micheletti on Monday appeared to be concerned that the decree went too far and would undercut the legitimacy of the election and jeopardize the reinstatement of foreign aid, which had accounted for 20 percent of the country’s budget.

The United States and other countries have suggested that they will not recognize a new president elected under the existing political conditions. The emergency decree, which was to have expired just two weeks before the elections, made it much less likely that the elections would be seen as free and fair.

Over the past week, a few tentative steps at negotiations have begun. Four presidential candidates met with Mr. Zelaya at the Brazilian Embassy and the auxiliary archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Juan José Pineda, has been meeting with both sides.

On Monday evening, the Micheletti government also announced that it would welcome another O.A.S. visit next week.

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